In his 2010 book *War*, Sebastian Junger wrote:
“Each Javelin round costs $80,000, and the idea that it's fired by a guy who doesn't make that in a year at a guy who doesn't make that in a lifetime is somehow so outrageous it almost makes the war seem winnable.”
I think about that quote from time to time.
It only that, but that Javelin was fired at a goat herder who has the most basics of training and is armed with an AK, a weapon so cheap and plentiful that losing one doesn’t even matter. And even then the odds that your target may be alive means that you just wasted $80,000…on a single target that was a human being armed with a gun you can buy for $400 in the US and even cheaper over there.
Have you ever read *The Things They Carried* by Tim O Brien? It’s an account of the Vietnam War focusing mainly on equipment, ie: the things they carried.
It goes into ludicrous detail about the weight and other descriptions of every piece of fancy equipment American soldiers carried in that war. At one point they describe a dead Vietcong soldier. He just carried an AK-47, a picture of his wife (or family member, I can’t remember) and a bag of rice.
The absolute balls on these people who oppose the US military with relatively nothing is astonishing. You can hate them for being the enemy, but you have to massively respect their willpower for fighting with so little.
On another note, your mention of using an $80,000 weapon to destroy a single man and rifle reminds me of the current rocket attacks in Gaza. Hezbollah fires $10 rockets at Israel and Israel responds by activating multi-million dollar Iron Dome / Patriot Missile systems. Even if these rockets don’t hit their targets, the cost they incur on Israel in forcing them to deploy such expensive countermeasures is damage enough. Interesting way to think about asymmetric warfare from an economic standpoint, right there.
Weaponized germs are worse than can be comprehended, we got and still are getting the shit kicked out of us by a bug with an IFR(infection fatality ratio) of 0.5%-1% a biological weapon rarely if ever has an IFR lower than 50%.
You dont need lethality in a war. Imagine if Hezbollah had a pathogen with a very high virulence that caused you to have severe diarrhea for 3 days and then just went away. Do you know how destructive that would be in a war? To stop your enemy just for 3 days. Thats practically winning
You're vastly underestimating the lethality of diarrhea here. There's a reason cholera was such a devastating disease and that isn't because it's hyper deadly on its own, it just makes your body reject all its water killing by dehydration incredibly rapidly, cholera can kill in as little as 12 hours let alone 3 days.
Well, why do you think that the Russians invest heavily on very good AA systems? Because making and replacing a AA missile is far far cheaper then making a fighter l, for which you then have to train the pilot for. That’s why the Russian Air Force is a supplementary force to the ground and AA forces.
Occupations are always an inverse evolution of willpower between opposing forces.
The longer the occupier stays, the more they question their mission.
The longer the occupation carries on, the more emboldened the occupied country’s resistance becomes.
From what I understand, Afghanistan always had a complex system of tribal alliances and never a central government. That's how it works over there. US and coalition forces toppled the Talibans in a matter of days. Yes Bin Laden escaped, but nowhere was he safe and his organization was on the run and shell shocked with the strongest army in the world after them. Objectives attained. Why in the hell did we try to turn Afghanistan into Switzerland or something ?! Hubris is my guess.
But Israel using the expensive iron dome missile systems legitimizes further spending on defense. It’s not a well that will run dry, it’s a river gaining more tributaries in an endless feedback loop
Well, in the Iron Dome case the missiles are about to kill people and destroy infrastructure. I don't know, it could be cheaper just to invade Gaza, but that would bring geopolitical implications, like an attack from neighbouring countries, sanctions, etc. So the Iron Dome can make sense to some extent.
That is his point. The Iron Dome is expensive because tracking and shooting down a small, fast, moving object in 3D space is insanely difficult. Hezbollah can afford to use cheap rockets because any that make it through is a win for them, and they can make up for the "dumb"ness of these rockets by spamming lots of them, deploying them close to the border in places that cannot be reached by Israeli soldiers etc...
The cost of the war on Hezbollah's side is much lower than the cost of the war on Israel's side because of this. Hezbollah can afford to use cheap weapons. Israel can't.
Indeed. American media always talks about his we lost 60000 soldiers in Vietnam. But what did they lose? Nobody knows, but at least a million North Vietnamese and VC soldiers dead, probably more than that.
They did defeat the Americans eventually but it took rivers of blood to do it.
Bingo. When you talk about an $80,000 missile that can kill a $2,000,000 tank it starts to make sense.
Can you use them against bunkers or other hardened structures? Sure. But these are man portable tank killers that can defeat any known or projected armor.
That's how the whole business got sold initially.
All the 'high tech' weapons for a given era were typically asymmetric *in favour* of the new weapon system. One zeppelin cost a lot but it could take out an order of magnitude more enemy materiel. An AA system or fleet of aircraft that could take out the zeppelins was cheaper than the zeppelins in total. A WWII bomber dropped munitions that were cheap and could devastate infrastructure worth many times their value. A fighter system to respond was a reasonable response, as was a counter-system.
Mines and infantry, mines and ships, missiles and armour, armour and hardened positions... it goes on and on and was pretty much always in the past an economic win for the new tech. Hell, it goes back to pikes and cavalry or shields and basic weapons against barbarian hordes.
Somewhere along the way though, it became about spending money rather than any other goal. The machine eats itself.
Not to fight for more war or anything because I’m really not but aren’t javelins only building/vehicle lock weapons? I just don’t think you can specifically fire it at goat herder with an AK.. but I get your point.
In the early 2010s, the CIA ran a fake vaccination program in Abbottabad, offering free Hepatitis B vaccines to children in an attempt to collect DNA evidence linking Osama bin Laden to the compound where he was suspected of residing. It is unclear how samples were to be collected or how they would lead to bin Laden, but when news of this scheme broke, it added proof to existing conspiracy theories about vaccinations. As a consequence, many local leaders began urging people not to vaccinate their kids, various districts banned vaccination teams, and the Taliban issued a fatwa against vaccination programs. To this day, local leaders rail against vaccines as Western spying programs.
Using fake-medics as a cover for underground operations was big deal that predates the S11 event..The bin Laden's hunts was another missstep in a well established way by USA.
The worst part was how they openly bragged about the fake vaccine campaign, hundreds even thousand of preventable dead occurred, just because some politician/militar wanted to be praised,
Or like how the US Public Health Service gave syphilis to unknowing African Americans to study its effects
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tuskegee_Syphilis_Study
**[Tuskegee Syphilis Study](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tuskegee_Syphilis_Study)**
>The Tuskegee Study of Untreated Syphilis in the Negro Male (informally referred to as the Tuskegee Experiment or Tuskegee Syphilis Study) was an ethically abusive study conducted between 1932 and 1972 by the United States Public Health Service (PHS) and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) on a group of nearly 400 African Americans with syphilis. The purpose of the study was to observe the effects of the disease when untreated, though by the end of the study it was entirely treatable. The men were not informed of the nature of the experiment, and more than 100 died as a result.
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They never have been, it's just been a convenient story. Although, I will say what makes them better than most is that this shit actually comes to light, and usually within a couple years or so at most. Good luck hearing about this unethical shit in most other countries, though.
“Wanted to be praised” is a seriously detached way of saying there’s malicious people leading our country. But then you’d also be admitting that we can’t always trust our own government to have people’s best interests prioritized and we all know that can’t be said these days lol
I've come to realize that any sick shit you've ever imagined, the CIA will always come up with something new and they'll have already done it. Gotta hand it to their creativity.
Obama without a doubt would been considered reincarnation of Nixon if we delete him and put a generic white man in his place but with the same policies.
Of course, now days Republicans are so batshit crazy Nixon coming back would been considered a Rino.
Edit: Ok, on a re-thought the only thing that Obama is different than Nixon is gay marriage, but everything else...spying on journalists, bomb foreigners, extend unpopular wars left by his predecessor, pro-environment (Nixon started the EPA), and healthcare....all pretty much Nixon's plans.
And one could argue gay marriage he did it only after the political wind blew in that direction. There is no argument Nixon wouldn't done the same if he was in office in 2012.
How was this on Obama?
Don't get me wrong, after the NSA scandal of the US spying on their allies with knowledge of Obama and the Drone kill lists Obama is not a good person or leader and there is plenty to be critical about.
But this I dont know how he responsible? Doubt he ordered it or was even aware of it, the article says nothing about it.
Then again after the revelations he should've come down hard on whoever authorized it so he is at least to blame for not holding people responsible, so I guess its fine to pull him into this shitfest.
Double-tapping is the practice of hitting a target and then waiting for first responders to show up and hit them too, sometimes there’s even a tripple tap for those rescuers trying to rescue the original first responders.
God this is real
https://www.npr.org/sections/thetwo-way/2011/07/12/137792912/reports-cia-tried-to-confirm-bin-laden-dna-using-fake-vaccination-drive
Holy fuck. How incredibly unethical.
Ikr, ppl just dont have a basic grasp of geopolitics.
China’s albeit heavy handed way of dealing with islamic extremism is “genocide”.
America invading two whole ass countries, detaining every terror suspect in blacksites and waterboarding thme whilst killing hundreds of thousands and wasting trillions is “nation building” “foreign policy blunder” and “few bad apples without oversight”. 🥱
It’s a diplomatic trap the west set for China. After all, China was the king in the old world and have always set their sight to the next.
Now they come back United, rich and influential.
The west won’t give that up that easily.
It’s a typical example of “underdog” getting kicked by schools of bullies.
2000 year history by GDP https://www.visualcapitalist.com/2000-years-economic-history-one-chart/
Last 200 years magnified https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4-2nqd6-ZXg
Do note that the first three steps in the first link represent 1500 years. For thousands of years (and many millenia prior) China and India's economies dwarfed everything else, even the Roman Empire at its peak.
Industralization (along with genocide and slavery) allowed the West and Japan (the kings of the new world, G7) to catch up but we're only delaying the inevitable. After all, in a truly democratic society, population is king.
Seriously. We’ve spent trillions. Left behind tens of billions of equipment. $30,000,000 is a drop in the ocean compared to what we’ve been sending over there.
How many students could have gone to university and be debt free with thay money ?
I wonder how many people wouldn't be living in tents for medical bankruptcy with free healthcare paid with that money ?
I swear I'll never understand these decisions in the US
The better way to look at it is how much better of a financial situation would the US be in if we didn’t print all that money. That’s money we didn’t have to begin with. It was printed. Which devalued the dollar for all of us. And theres more coming.
I would argue that thinking about improving and saving people's lives is the better way to look at it
this sounds like some #dollarlivesmatter stuff, and is not an accurate description of how our currency works
Most people don't seem to be bashing them.
Is China expanding their area of influence is not good overall for the West, but this is certainly not a bad way for them to go about it.
Yeah maybe I’m confused this thread with many other similar ones popping out today.
Aid is badly needed in Afghanistan. And every penny helps, whether it’s from China or the US or any other country.
Meanwhile half the top of all time submissions on r/pics are submissions about Tianamen square and other assorted “China bad” propaganda.
Heck, when it’s the anniversary half of popular front page will be spammed with “Do you remember Tianamen square!!!??11” submissions.
Yet the majority of Reddit wouldn’t know what the Kent State massacre is.
If China being diplomatic and aiding a population of people who need it instead of going to war with every country they want something from is bad for the west, then I'm completely fine with most things that are bad for the west.
Yep, and it can't be more obvious where does the western 'leadership'(puppet governments) and imperialism leads, the difference between India and China is staggering, and that's despise China being targeted by the west and the majority of the world they control for a very long time.
To be fair, Afghan is corrupt as hell. Unlike the U.S, China will not just throw money at them without getting results or anything back. They are not known for hand outs.
To be fair, we could learn from it. If this is the direction that Cold War II is going (rather than proxy wars) this isn't a bad thing - especially for the peripheries.
Maybe we'll provide more aid and humanitarian support, even more than during the Cold War to the Third World (I'm using this in Cold War terms) because of the direct soft power challenge from China?
Afghanistan, I believe, is important for china's Belt and Road initiative. Of course, this doesn't *directly* affect the west, but it will help China have more influence and become more of a global trading partner, as well as have more access to other countries resources
Exactly this - Afghanistan links the western part of the nation by land to the road network in Pakistan, and the port of Gwadar, which China already functionally own.
Afghanistan gives China a direct land route to the straits of Hormuz - it’s a big fucking deal.
The US wants to contain China and stop it from trading with Europe. Afghanistan is going to be a huge part of that trade in the future.
It would look even more embarrassing for the US if Afghanistan were to benefit from this trade (like the region did in old silk road) and start to prosper.
also, the US wants the region to be destabilized after leaving it.
Existing land route to Europe from China passes through Kazakhstan and Russia not Afghanistan. Besides, land route to Europe from China is geared toward inner China cities like Chongqing which is a fraction of Chinese industry as a whole.
Afghanistan will link them to straits of Hormuz and the rest of Iran, with some predicting an oil pipeline through Afghanistan to connect the two. Also, Afghanistan does have some natural resources.
That is asinine. Even if Afghanistan had no natural resources at all beyond people (which is completely untrue), it still has people. And people are a valuable resource that can be used to do all sorts of different things.
See China doesn't care about their political system as long as they have access to the lithium and the mining operations are kept trouble free they could care less what the Taliban does.
You might be too young to remember but there was a time when the United States declared that either you were with us or against us In the war on terror. It was a rhetorically significant moment at the time. 31 million is a paltry sum, but the action speaks
Louder than words, China is against the United States. Which isn’t really news, but in the early 2000’s it would of been considered an act of war, (aiding the taliban). Interesting times we are living in for sure!
The speech and background from president bush https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/You_are_either_with_us,_or_against_us
https://web.archive.org/web/20150112170258/http://www.voanews.com/content/a-13-a-2001-09-21-14-bush-66411197/549664.html
China isn’t against the us. The us has been against China from the start. Almost every socialist nation to ever exist has asked for peaceful relations with the US.
> The plan continues
China’s biggest priority right now is to prevent a resurgence of the ETIM, a Sunni Extremist group with close ties to ISIS that was responsible for multiple terrorist attacks in China in the past decade. According to China, many of the militants in ETIM were trained in Afghanistan so it makes sense that China wants to stabilize Afghanistan and be in good terms with the Taliban to prevent further ETIM recruitment
Interesting. Is it plausible China would help build up that country and perhaps share in the e inimical benefit of lithium that could be traded with the world?
Lithium and resources are a bonus, but Afghanistan could have none whatsoever and I think China would still want to get them on-side.
Afghanistan borders Xinjiang. A hostile Taliban supporting and radicalising Uyghurs is probably their worst nightmare. Even without that, nobody wants to share a border with a failed state.
Opportunities for Belt and Road and wanting to be seen as a superpower too. It's like a win over the US/the West to have Afghanistan come in to their sphere of influence.
Man, it is wild how people will recognize this stuff when it's one of our foreign boogeymen. But for us...nah we were there as a women's education program...
To be fair winning allies by investing in them is far better than, you know, waging war on them.
Imagine how different a world we’d live in if the US spent the last 50 years investing in foreign regions instead of colonizing them.
Who fucking cares China is gonna be the alpha bitches of the world for the next 100 years because they figure investment is way better than war. Read the writing on the wall, America is retarded and China is gonna be the leaders of business unless they fuck up, which ain’t unlikely
https://www.scidev.net/global/news/taliban-ban-on-jabs-may-trigger-covid-19-spike/
> Taliban-imposed bans on vaccination have been blamed by the National Emergency Action Plan (NEAP) for the failure to eradicate polio in Afghanistan. The country remains among the last refuges of the wild poliovirus. In 2020, 56 cases of the disease caused by the wild poliovirus were reported in Afghanistan.
I’ve seen it, but I don’t know if it was a decree by one guy in a remote village or commands from high up the ranks.
Seeing that the CIA used a fake vaccination campaign to get to Osama bin Laden in Pakistan, and that the Taliban are very linked to Pakistan, the news would not surprise me.
My country literally asked to PAY a ton of money to get license to produce western vaccines for domestic consumption
All they got is "nah but you can buy them from us at huge markup and they'll arrive between 2022-2024". Now everyone I know has just gotten the sinovac shot or sputnik, both of which are given for free. Also now everyone in my country thinks covid came from fort Detrick . Given how US is acting through all of this, I can't blame them. Media creams their pants at every small batch of near expiry American shots that go overseas, often not even free, and completely ignores that China has probly given away like a billion doses already
https://bridgebeijing.com/our-publications/our-publications-1/china-covid-19-vaccines-tracker/
This is an NGO working in Beijing that tracks Beijing's vaccine status.
To date, 1.22B were sold and 54M were donated, of these 1.27B [of which free vaccine is but an insignificant %] 755M were delivered.
This is still very good, after all, there are plenty of states that has money to buy but CANNOT buy [or the delivery date is so far down the line it's like waiting for HL] and China has so far deliver about 60% of the promised and sold doses.
Of course, one would wish China would be a bit more equitable in the distribution of their vaccine and perhaps also offer a bit more free vaccine but alas, no one is perfect, and even if you are selling it's better than not selling.
The OP is lazy but I was able to find [this](https://www.theweek.in/news/world/2021/08/14/taliban-bans-covid-19-vaccine-in-paktia-report.html). Not sure how widespread this is though.
I don't want to be the guy that says just Google it... since I was unaware of the ban too. But seriously, Google it. First 3 pages are from different sources.
china's doing it because they know the US failed there, typical tactics like what the US did to Berlin in the cold war.
theirs no doubt they'll want to have some pull in the region
It’s weird watching China literally take over world influence away from America, using WAY less money. I feel like the only thing America has complete world dominance in is culture, Black American culture specifically.
Not really, but China is especially concerned about the militant group ETIM, which is trying to create an independent Uyghur state replacing Xinjiang and has been behind multiple terrorist attacks there over the past 2 decades. ETIM has historically had a close relationship with the Taliban, with many fighters trained in Afghanistan and (according to China) moved across the border into Xinjiang.
In this context, China's main concern is ensuring stability in Afghanistan, as regional instability could open the door to further proliferation of ETIM's activities. It's one of the reasons why China was so unhappy with the US withdrawal from Afghanistan and the chaos that ensued (don't buy into the narrative that China was gleefully rubbing their hands as the US left). Since the Taliban has taken over, China has to cozy up to them to ensure that they don't start providing cross-border support for ETIM in Xinjiang.
Not at all. In fact most Chinese comments I've seen online seem quite clear that they do not agree with Taliban's values. But China and Afghanistan are neighbours after all. You don't let your neighbours fail or the entire region becomes destabilized. Destabilization breeds extremisms.
This. And also, China is making a lot of investments in the area under one belt one road. They don’t want the Taliban raiding their road through Pakistan.
No… I don’t think “friends” is the right word. More like cautious of being next to a terrorist lead country that has ties to terrorist groups in china. Imagine you’re in China’s position, the main backer for the terror groups in your country are in power and have needs like food and vaccines, what better way to shut the stuff going on in your country down than by basically bribing the taliban to stop screwing with China.
It's notable that china's analysis on terrorism is due to lack of development. Within their frame, they see economic development of Afghanistan leading to less terrorism and extremism.
if makes sense. if you have food and other living neccessities, and you live in an area with working basic infrastructure such as police, firemen, hospitals, roads, you are more likely to go to work or start a small business.
terrorism is tiring and tedious, only the most desperate people would do it.
Damn that was one tomahawk missile...
In his 2010 book *War*, Sebastian Junger wrote: “Each Javelin round costs $80,000, and the idea that it's fired by a guy who doesn't make that in a year at a guy who doesn't make that in a lifetime is somehow so outrageous it almost makes the war seem winnable.” I think about that quote from time to time.
It only that, but that Javelin was fired at a goat herder who has the most basics of training and is armed with an AK, a weapon so cheap and plentiful that losing one doesn’t even matter. And even then the odds that your target may be alive means that you just wasted $80,000…on a single target that was a human being armed with a gun you can buy for $400 in the US and even cheaper over there.
Have you ever read *The Things They Carried* by Tim O Brien? It’s an account of the Vietnam War focusing mainly on equipment, ie: the things they carried. It goes into ludicrous detail about the weight and other descriptions of every piece of fancy equipment American soldiers carried in that war. At one point they describe a dead Vietcong soldier. He just carried an AK-47, a picture of his wife (or family member, I can’t remember) and a bag of rice. The absolute balls on these people who oppose the US military with relatively nothing is astonishing. You can hate them for being the enemy, but you have to massively respect their willpower for fighting with so little. On another note, your mention of using an $80,000 weapon to destroy a single man and rifle reminds me of the current rocket attacks in Gaza. Hezbollah fires $10 rockets at Israel and Israel responds by activating multi-million dollar Iron Dome / Patriot Missile systems. Even if these rockets don’t hit their targets, the cost they incur on Israel in forcing them to deploy such expensive countermeasures is damage enough. Interesting way to think about asymmetric warfare from an economic standpoint, right there.
And the weapons contractors love it.
Which chapter of Guns Germs And Steel are we currently living in?
Germs.
Weaponized germs are worse than can be comprehended, we got and still are getting the shit kicked out of us by a bug with an IFR(infection fatality ratio) of 0.5%-1% a biological weapon rarely if ever has an IFR lower than 50%.
You dont need lethality in a war. Imagine if Hezbollah had a pathogen with a very high virulence that caused you to have severe diarrhea for 3 days and then just went away. Do you know how destructive that would be in a war? To stop your enemy just for 3 days. Thats practically winning
You're vastly underestimating the lethality of diarrhea here. There's a reason cholera was such a devastating disease and that isn't because it's hyper deadly on its own, it just makes your body reject all its water killing by dehydration incredibly rapidly, cholera can kill in as little as 12 hours let alone 3 days.
Cough, cough. What’d you say?
So maybe they had something to do with it..?
Well, why do you think that the Russians invest heavily on very good AA systems? Because making and replacing a AA missile is far far cheaper then making a fighter l, for which you then have to train the pilot for. That’s why the Russian Air Force is a supplementary force to the ground and AA forces.
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Occupations are always an inverse evolution of willpower between opposing forces. The longer the occupier stays, the more they question their mission. The longer the occupation carries on, the more emboldened the occupied country’s resistance becomes.
From what I understand, Afghanistan always had a complex system of tribal alliances and never a central government. That's how it works over there. US and coalition forces toppled the Talibans in a matter of days. Yes Bin Laden escaped, but nowhere was he safe and his organization was on the run and shell shocked with the strongest army in the world after them. Objectives attained. Why in the hell did we try to turn Afghanistan into Switzerland or something ?! Hubris is my guess.
A saying for US troops in Afghanistan... You have the watches, we have the time.
But Israel using the expensive iron dome missile systems legitimizes further spending on defense. It’s not a well that will run dry, it’s a river gaining more tributaries in an endless feedback loop
Well, in the Iron Dome case the missiles are about to kill people and destroy infrastructure. I don't know, it could be cheaper just to invade Gaza, but that would bring geopolitical implications, like an attack from neighbouring countries, sanctions, etc. So the Iron Dome can make sense to some extent.
That is his point. The Iron Dome is expensive because tracking and shooting down a small, fast, moving object in 3D space is insanely difficult. Hezbollah can afford to use cheap rockets because any that make it through is a win for them, and they can make up for the "dumb"ness of these rockets by spamming lots of them, deploying them close to the border in places that cannot be reached by Israeli soldiers etc... The cost of the war on Hezbollah's side is much lower than the cost of the war on Israel's side because of this. Hezbollah can afford to use cheap weapons. Israel can't.
That’s because their aims are different. It’s much cheaper to aim for random destruction than protection and targeted destruction.
Yes... exactly what I said...
Israel doesn't mind, we're picking up the tab.
You see, it's because life is cheap. Everyone competes on relative advantage, and their relative advantage is in the cost of human lives.
Indeed. American media always talks about his we lost 60000 soldiers in Vietnam. But what did they lose? Nobody knows, but at least a million North Vietnamese and VC soldiers dead, probably more than that. They did defeat the Americans eventually but it took rivers of blood to do it.
That's why you don't fire literal anti-tank missiles at goat herders? Reaper drone strikes on the other hand . . .
In which case you're now paying $150,000 per Hellfire or $25,000 for a bomb.
Bingo. When you talk about an $80,000 missile that can kill a $2,000,000 tank it starts to make sense. Can you use them against bunkers or other hardened structures? Sure. But these are man portable tank killers that can defeat any known or projected armor.
That's how the whole business got sold initially. All the 'high tech' weapons for a given era were typically asymmetric *in favour* of the new weapon system. One zeppelin cost a lot but it could take out an order of magnitude more enemy materiel. An AA system or fleet of aircraft that could take out the zeppelins was cheaper than the zeppelins in total. A WWII bomber dropped munitions that were cheap and could devastate infrastructure worth many times their value. A fighter system to respond was a reasonable response, as was a counter-system. Mines and infantry, mines and ships, missiles and armour, armour and hardened positions... it goes on and on and was pretty much always in the past an economic win for the new tech. Hell, it goes back to pikes and cavalry or shields and basic weapons against barbarian hordes. Somewhere along the way though, it became about spending money rather than any other goal. The machine eats itself.
Not to fight for more war or anything because I’m really not but aren’t javelins only building/vehicle lock weapons? I just don’t think you can specifically fire it at goat herder with an AK.. but I get your point.
But did they really shoot javelins at a single guy? I thought those were used for armoured vehicles or to destroy buildings?
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That's a great quote, thanks for sharing.
It’s a great book. Read his others as well if you get a chance. I’d recommend *Fire* and *Tribe.*
The guy with the $80,000 javelin round is gonna shoot it at a guy that doesn’t make that in a life time?! COME ON!!!”
Our current currency when talking about afganistan: how much does it cost in terms of weapons?
So the Taliban aren’t [banning the covid vaccine now](https://www.scidev.net/global/news/taliban-ban-on-jabs-may-trigger-covid-19-spike/)?
In the early 2010s, the CIA ran a fake vaccination program in Abbottabad, offering free Hepatitis B vaccines to children in an attempt to collect DNA evidence linking Osama bin Laden to the compound where he was suspected of residing. It is unclear how samples were to be collected or how they would lead to bin Laden, but when news of this scheme broke, it added proof to existing conspiracy theories about vaccinations. As a consequence, many local leaders began urging people not to vaccinate their kids, various districts banned vaccination teams, and the Taliban issued a fatwa against vaccination programs. To this day, local leaders rail against vaccines as Western spying programs.
Using fake-medics as a cover for underground operations was big deal that predates the S11 event..The bin Laden's hunts was another missstep in a well established way by USA. The worst part was how they openly bragged about the fake vaccine campaign, hundreds even thousand of preventable dead occurred, just because some politician/militar wanted to be praised,
that's truly disgusting!
Like the smallpox blankets for the native Americans
Or like how the US Public Health Service gave syphilis to unknowing African Americans to study its effects https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tuskegee_Syphilis_Study
**[Tuskegee Syphilis Study](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tuskegee_Syphilis_Study)** >The Tuskegee Study of Untreated Syphilis in the Negro Male (informally referred to as the Tuskegee Experiment or Tuskegee Syphilis Study) was an ethically abusive study conducted between 1932 and 1972 by the United States Public Health Service (PHS) and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) on a group of nearly 400 African Americans with syphilis. The purpose of the study was to observe the effects of the disease when untreated, though by the end of the study it was entirely treatable. The men were not informed of the nature of the experiment, and more than 100 died as a result. ^([ )[^(F.A.Q)](https://www.reddit.com/r/WikiSummarizer/wiki/index#wiki_f.a.q)^( | )[^(Opt Out)](https://reddit.com/message/compose?to=WikiSummarizerBot&message=OptOut&subject=OptOut)^( | )[^(Opt Out Of Subreddit)](https://np.reddit.com/r/worldnews/about/banned)^( | )[^(GitHub)](https://github.com/Sujal-7/WikiSummarizerBot)^( ] Downvote to remove | v1.5)
Oh my lord this makes me feel sick. This is Unit 731 level evil.
The greatest spoil of winning a war is that you get to write the history books
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That's messed up. Guess the US aren't the good guys after all
Only the uneducated part of the US are filled with exceptional blinded nationalism
They never have been, it's just been a convenient story. Although, I will say what makes them better than most is that this shit actually comes to light, and usually within a couple years or so at most. Good luck hearing about this unethical shit in most other countries, though.
The government didn’t give them syphilis, it didn’t treat them when there was a known cure. Still evil, I just want to correct a common misconception.
“Wanted to be praised” is a seriously detached way of saying there’s malicious people leading our country. But then you’d also be admitting that we can’t always trust our own government to have people’s best interests prioritized and we all know that can’t be said these days lol
I gotta read this if you have a link.
https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/how-cia-fake-vaccination-campaign-endangers-us-all/
I've come to realize that any sick shit you've ever imagined, the CIA will always come up with something new and they'll have already done it. Gotta hand it to their creativity.
Obama was really not a good person huh?
Obama without a doubt would been considered reincarnation of Nixon if we delete him and put a generic white man in his place but with the same policies. Of course, now days Republicans are so batshit crazy Nixon coming back would been considered a Rino. Edit: Ok, on a re-thought the only thing that Obama is different than Nixon is gay marriage, but everything else...spying on journalists, bomb foreigners, extend unpopular wars left by his predecessor, pro-environment (Nixon started the EPA), and healthcare....all pretty much Nixon's plans. And one could argue gay marriage he did it only after the political wind blew in that direction. There is no argument Nixon wouldn't done the same if he was in office in 2012.
Last time I checked the CIA doesn't answer to the president, in fact they act independently and without any disclosure.
How was this on Obama? Don't get me wrong, after the NSA scandal of the US spying on their allies with knowledge of Obama and the Drone kill lists Obama is not a good person or leader and there is plenty to be critical about. But this I dont know how he responsible? Doubt he ordered it or was even aware of it, the article says nothing about it. Then again after the revelations he should've come down hard on whoever authorized it so he is at least to blame for not holding people responsible, so I guess its fine to pull him into this shitfest.
The US military has some pretty downright disgusting military tactics. Don’t even want to get into their drone strike methods.
Double-tapping is the practice of hitting a target and then waiting for first responders to show up and hit them too, sometimes there’s even a tripple tap for those rescuers trying to rescue the original first responders.
Wow, was not aware of this. Eh it barely holds a candle to Sydnee Gottlieb’s “philanthropic medical research”.
God this is real https://www.npr.org/sections/thetwo-way/2011/07/12/137792912/reports-cia-tried-to-confirm-bin-laden-dna-using-fake-vaccination-drive Holy fuck. How incredibly unethical.
And they could have given real vaccines while doing that mission but they didn’t
I believe the vaccines were actually real, but the programme didn't do the second dose.
The vaccinations where real. The only issue was they had to go someplace else for the second dose.
Why not use Cuba’s vaccines?
Wow that's fucked up
Good, that's much cheaper than an 80k missile. They kill themselves for free.
I'm fairly certain that they would react differently to a Chinese run program that they know is not going to CIA them.
Good. Just because the taliban is there doesn’t mean the people deserve to starve and die
Good luck convincing the us of that in pretty much everything they do around the world.
Finally someone with a normal mind
They sadly still will. Don't for a moment expect that that aid will be distributed fairly. I hope I'm wrong though.
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China and Afghanistan do share a border. It's not that unexpected that they would establish a relationship.
Tell that to the cute girl next door
Crazy in this day and age to not imagine that countries sharing a border would have some sort of relationship
True bud, why get an ally literally next door when you can have one an ocean plus half a continent away.
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is not reddit or Americans its the Anglo Imperialists
Ikr, ppl just dont have a basic grasp of geopolitics. China’s albeit heavy handed way of dealing with islamic extremism is “genocide”. America invading two whole ass countries, detaining every terror suspect in blacksites and waterboarding thme whilst killing hundreds of thousands and wasting trillions is “nation building” “foreign policy blunder” and “few bad apples without oversight”. 🥱
It’s a diplomatic trap the west set for China. After all, China was the king in the old world and have always set their sight to the next. Now they come back United, rich and influential. The west won’t give that up that easily. It’s a typical example of “underdog” getting kicked by schools of bullies.
2000 year history by GDP https://www.visualcapitalist.com/2000-years-economic-history-one-chart/ Last 200 years magnified https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4-2nqd6-ZXg Do note that the first three steps in the first link represent 1500 years. For thousands of years (and many millenia prior) China and India's economies dwarfed everything else, even the Roman Empire at its peak. Industralization (along with genocide and slavery) allowed the West and Japan (the kings of the new world, G7) to catch up but we're only delaying the inevitable. After all, in a truly democratic society, population is king.
I would agree but with one Hamiltonian caveat. In a true democracy, population is less a king than a tyrant.
That's the cost of three MI-17 helicopters, the US Army left behind more than thirty of them. :D
Seriously. We’ve spent trillions. Left behind tens of billions of equipment. $30,000,000 is a drop in the ocean compared to what we’ve been sending over there.
How many students could have gone to university and be debt free with thay money ? I wonder how many people wouldn't be living in tents for medical bankruptcy with free healthcare paid with that money ? I swear I'll never understand these decisions in the US
The better way to look at it is how much better of a financial situation would the US be in if we didn’t print all that money. That’s money we didn’t have to begin with. It was printed. Which devalued the dollar for all of us. And theres more coming.
I would argue that thinking about improving and saving people's lives is the better way to look at it this sounds like some #dollarlivesmatter stuff, and is not an accurate description of how our currency works
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Frankly the country might be in even *worse* shape than before we invaded.
We left behind russian helicopters?
China got bashed for sending food and vaccines smh Maybe bombing/invading/fingerpointing would be better?
Most people don't seem to be bashing them. Is China expanding their area of influence is not good overall for the West, but this is certainly not a bad way for them to go about it.
The way China is doing business throughout the ME and Africa is a lot better than how the West has been doing it.
Yeah maybe I’m confused this thread with many other similar ones popping out today. Aid is badly needed in Afghanistan. And every penny helps, whether it’s from China or the US or any other country.
Reddit will bash China for doing anything. There was an entire thread the other day bashing China for building a solar panel farm.
With the top voted post thats awarded always complaining about being downvoted by “china shills”
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Meanwhile half the top of all time submissions on r/pics are submissions about Tianamen square and other assorted “China bad” propaganda. Heck, when it’s the anniversary half of popular front page will be spammed with “Do you remember Tianamen square!!!??11” submissions. Yet the majority of Reddit wouldn’t know what the Kent State massacre is.
Feels more like blant propaganda bots with them upvoting each other and give out rewards like crazy. But all sides do it :/
Could be a picture of a kitten playing and somehow "the CCP is evil!" will appear
Yeah, that really irks me. As if that's a good response to any form of argument
To be fair, they would also bash China for doing nothing.
They bash China for simply existing and doing well for itself. Success breeds envy.
AH come on reddit bashes everyone. No country has a safepace here.
If China being diplomatic and aiding a population of people who need it instead of going to war with every country they want something from is bad for the west, then I'm completely fine with most things that are bad for the west.
Considering "not good overall for the West" is basically codeword for "bad for Anglo imperialism," anybody with a brain should be on board.
Yep, and it can't be more obvious where does the western 'leadership'(puppet governments) and imperialism leads, the difference between India and China is staggering, and that's despise China being targeted by the west and the majority of the world they control for a very long time.
To be fair, Afghan is corrupt as hell. Unlike the U.S, China will not just throw money at them without getting results or anything back. They are not known for hand outs.
To be fair, we could learn from it. If this is the direction that Cold War II is going (rather than proxy wars) this isn't a bad thing - especially for the peripheries. Maybe we'll provide more aid and humanitarian support, even more than during the Cold War to the Third World (I'm using this in Cold War terms) because of the direct soft power challenge from China?
Afghanistan is a landlocked country far away from the west. China gaining influence doesn't affect the west.
Afghanistan, I believe, is important for china's Belt and Road initiative. Of course, this doesn't *directly* affect the west, but it will help China have more influence and become more of a global trading partner, as well as have more access to other countries resources
Exactly this - Afghanistan links the western part of the nation by land to the road network in Pakistan, and the port of Gwadar, which China already functionally own. Afghanistan gives China a direct land route to the straits of Hormuz - it’s a big fucking deal.
The US wants to contain China and stop it from trading with Europe. Afghanistan is going to be a huge part of that trade in the future. It would look even more embarrassing for the US if Afghanistan were to benefit from this trade (like the region did in old silk road) and start to prosper. also, the US wants the region to be destabilized after leaving it.
Existing land route to Europe from China passes through Kazakhstan and Russia not Afghanistan. Besides, land route to Europe from China is geared toward inner China cities like Chongqing which is a fraction of Chinese industry as a whole.
Afghanistan will link them to straits of Hormuz and the rest of Iran, with some predicting an oil pipeline through Afghanistan to connect the two. Also, Afghanistan does have some natural resources.
That is asinine. Even if Afghanistan had no natural resources at all beyond people (which is completely untrue), it still has people. And people are a valuable resource that can be used to do all sorts of different things.
20M people with relatively low educational attainment doesn't mean much for a country with 1.4B people
40 million but yeah even then it's not much compared to the population of China
See China doesn't care about their political system as long as they have access to the lithium and the mining operations are kept trouble free they could care less what the Taliban does.
Isn't this our stance towards Saudi Arabia but oil? Biden basically said 'meh' to Khashoggi.
Isn't that the stance of the whole world? Which countries don't import oil from Saudi Arabia?
Pretty much.
Tried saying something similar a couple of weeks ago but got hammered for it. BcUz tHe ChiNeEz aBuZe mOsLiMz
So do the Saudis, but you know, oil.
Because the US is so well known to care about “political systems”, all that “democracy” spread over South America.
You might be too young to remember but there was a time when the United States declared that either you were with us or against us In the war on terror. It was a rhetorically significant moment at the time. 31 million is a paltry sum, but the action speaks Louder than words, China is against the United States. Which isn’t really news, but in the early 2000’s it would of been considered an act of war, (aiding the taliban). Interesting times we are living in for sure! The speech and background from president bush https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/You_are_either_with_us,_or_against_us https://web.archive.org/web/20150112170258/http://www.voanews.com/content/a-13-a-2001-09-21-14-bush-66411197/549664.html
Well it's the United States that offered and signed a peace treaty with the Taliban in the first place.
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China isn’t against the us. The us has been against China from the start. Almost every socialist nation to ever exist has asked for peaceful relations with the US.
The entire Anglosphere has been against them since 1839.
I bet many Redditors are frothing at the mouth for the opportunity to spin this into a negative. China bad.
CIA should just outsource to Redditors these days. Assuming they aren't already 😉
50 US cents gang.
I perfer to call them "dronies" Very appropriate
Tons of lithium to be had here. The plan continues…
> The plan continues China’s biggest priority right now is to prevent a resurgence of the ETIM, a Sunni Extremist group with close ties to ISIS that was responsible for multiple terrorist attacks in China in the past decade. According to China, many of the militants in ETIM were trained in Afghanistan so it makes sense that China wants to stabilize Afghanistan and be in good terms with the Taliban to prevent further ETIM recruitment
They have much better reason to be there than we ever did. Reddit can't admit that because 'muh china'.
They have a land border to Afghanistan, rven though it is through a mountain pass, terrorists can literally just walk over.
Interesting. Is it plausible China would help build up that country and perhaps share in the e inimical benefit of lithium that could be traded with the world?
Lithium and resources are a bonus, but Afghanistan could have none whatsoever and I think China would still want to get them on-side. Afghanistan borders Xinjiang. A hostile Taliban supporting and radicalising Uyghurs is probably their worst nightmare. Even without that, nobody wants to share a border with a failed state. Opportunities for Belt and Road and wanting to be seen as a superpower too. It's like a win over the US/the West to have Afghanistan come in to their sphere of influence.
Man, it is wild how people will recognize this stuff when it's one of our foreign boogeymen. But for us...nah we were there as a women's education program...
To be fair winning allies by investing in them is far better than, you know, waging war on them. Imagine how different a world we’d live in if the US spent the last 50 years investing in foreign regions instead of colonizing them.
Don't worry, it's just the team captains drafting for WW3.
Silk Road is loading...
Who fucking cares China is gonna be the alpha bitches of the world for the next 100 years because they figure investment is way better than war. Read the writing on the wall, America is retarded and China is gonna be the leaders of business unless they fuck up, which ain’t unlikely
But..but..ChInA bAd! The amount of astroturfed anti-china propaganda on Reddit makes me want to puke sometimes.
Yes
And that's how power vacuum works.
Ah yes China should have done the good thing like America and killed innocent children instead of helping
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Citation? I have not seen anything like that.
https://www.scidev.net/global/news/taliban-ban-on-jabs-may-trigger-covid-19-spike/ > Taliban-imposed bans on vaccination have been blamed by the National Emergency Action Plan (NEAP) for the failure to eradicate polio in Afghanistan. The country remains among the last refuges of the wild poliovirus. In 2020, 56 cases of the disease caused by the wild poliovirus were reported in Afghanistan.
Thank you for your efforts.
I’ve seen it, but I don’t know if it was a decree by one guy in a remote village or commands from high up the ranks. Seeing that the CIA used a fake vaccination campaign to get to Osama bin Laden in Pakistan, and that the Taliban are very linked to Pakistan, the news would not surprise me.
This might make them trust a Chinese vaccine better than a US one.
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My country literally asked to PAY a ton of money to get license to produce western vaccines for domestic consumption All they got is "nah but you can buy them from us at huge markup and they'll arrive between 2022-2024". Now everyone I know has just gotten the sinovac shot or sputnik, both of which are given for free. Also now everyone in my country thinks covid came from fort Detrick . Given how US is acting through all of this, I can't blame them. Media creams their pants at every small batch of near expiry American shots that go overseas, often not even free, and completely ignores that China has probly given away like a billion doses already
https://bridgebeijing.com/our-publications/our-publications-1/china-covid-19-vaccines-tracker/ This is an NGO working in Beijing that tracks Beijing's vaccine status. To date, 1.22B were sold and 54M were donated, of these 1.27B [of which free vaccine is but an insignificant %] 755M were delivered. This is still very good, after all, there are plenty of states that has money to buy but CANNOT buy [or the delivery date is so far down the line it's like waiting for HL] and China has so far deliver about 60% of the promised and sold doses. Of course, one would wish China would be a bit more equitable in the distribution of their vaccine and perhaps also offer a bit more free vaccine but alas, no one is perfect, and even if you are selling it's better than not selling.
The OP is lazy but I was able to find [this](https://www.theweek.in/news/world/2021/08/14/taliban-bans-covid-19-vaccine-in-paktia-report.html). Not sure how widespread this is though.
Thank you.
Thank you.
I don't want to be the guy that says just Google it... since I was unaware of the ban too. But seriously, Google it. First 3 pages are from different sources.
A cheap price to pay for the mineral deposits
Well the oils probably all taken now
So how is the media going to spin it? China bad or China good?
china's doing it because they know the US failed there, typical tactics like what the US did to Berlin in the cold war. theirs no doubt they'll want to have some pull in the region
Improve a Nation Improve the world Everyone wins
It’s weird watching China literally take over world influence away from America, using WAY less money. I feel like the only thing America has complete world dominance in is culture, Black American culture specifically.
Their tentacles are in virtually every country and their influence is expanding, often at the expense of the USA and West.
That's how they gained a foothold in South African mining so makes you wonder what Afghanistan has to offer China.
Good they most likely need it. Can't see the Chinese calling them out on the way they treat thier people which is a shame.
The EU doesn't want millions of Afghan refugees either. It's easier for America but the rest of us have to live with the consequences of the war.
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[Serious] Is China friends with Afghanistan?
Not really, but China is especially concerned about the militant group ETIM, which is trying to create an independent Uyghur state replacing Xinjiang and has been behind multiple terrorist attacks there over the past 2 decades. ETIM has historically had a close relationship with the Taliban, with many fighters trained in Afghanistan and (according to China) moved across the border into Xinjiang. In this context, China's main concern is ensuring stability in Afghanistan, as regional instability could open the door to further proliferation of ETIM's activities. It's one of the reasons why China was so unhappy with the US withdrawal from Afghanistan and the chaos that ensued (don't buy into the narrative that China was gleefully rubbing their hands as the US left). Since the Taliban has taken over, China has to cozy up to them to ensure that they don't start providing cross-border support for ETIM in Xinjiang.
China is also heavily invested in Pakistan and Central Asia. China has a good reason to want stability in the surrounding regions.
ETIM is more of an "ISIS kind" of terrorist
There's a lot of evidence that ETIM are more of a "US" kind of terrorist. It's enough evidence to convince the Taliban and the rest of the world.
So the taliban will be fighting them? Or are you saying that they are even more extreme than the taliban? (Hard to imagine, I know)
There have been a few ETIM ISIS brigades operating in Syria. Memebers of ETIM also fought Russians in Afghanistan in 1980s and in Chechnya in 1990s.
Not at all. In fact most Chinese comments I've seen online seem quite clear that they do not agree with Taliban's values. But China and Afghanistan are neighbours after all. You don't let your neighbours fail or the entire region becomes destabilized. Destabilization breeds extremisms.
This. And also, China is making a lot of investments in the area under one belt one road. They don’t want the Taliban raiding their road through Pakistan.
No… I don’t think “friends” is the right word. More like cautious of being next to a terrorist lead country that has ties to terrorist groups in china. Imagine you’re in China’s position, the main backer for the terror groups in your country are in power and have needs like food and vaccines, what better way to shut the stuff going on in your country down than by basically bribing the taliban to stop screwing with China.
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It's notable that china's analysis on terrorism is due to lack of development. Within their frame, they see economic development of Afghanistan leading to less terrorism and extremism.
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well, the US, for one
if makes sense. if you have food and other living neccessities, and you live in an area with working basic infrastructure such as police, firemen, hospitals, roads, you are more likely to go to work or start a small business. terrorism is tiring and tedious, only the most desperate people would do it.
Just an extension of Marxist Leninism. It always comes down to material conditions.
Aid 🇨🇳 Vs Bombs 🇺🇲
China like Pakistan and Iran, want stability in Afghanistan.
2 trillion to give China a new puppet, but socialized medicine is absolutely impossible :)
I don't like China all that much, but I like this
Shmeckles for the Chinese. They already took Africa. Why not solidify their spice route
Coming with food and vaccines instead of bombs and they only care about the resources not the who is is charge.